


Things you said when I was crying

by Laramie



Series: Things you said [2]
Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Angst, Death, Gen, Parent Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-09
Updated: 2015-04-09
Packaged: 2018-03-22 01:58:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3710620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laramie/pseuds/Laramie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thomas gets bad news. Jimmy tries to help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things you said when I was crying

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted from the "things you said..." meme by abbys-jam-juggler: "Things [Jimmy] said when [Thomas] was crying".

**June 1923**

When a letter arrived for Thomas, he was understandably surprised. In the last ten years he had only received letters from Miss O’Brien (during the war), Eddie (the first footman he had worked with, who had an attack of remembrance every third or fourth Christmas and sent Thomas a generic sort of bulletin of his life), and a few others on business matters.

The letter was long; he unfolded two large sheets from the envelope, then saw that the envelope itself had been written on too as a means of economy. He read the rough handwriting, scattered with small ink blots as though written by an unpractised hand, over breakfast, and immediately wished that he had not.

Everything seemed to end at that moment. He could barely keep his feet during serving, because what did it _matter_? He was cutting towards Anna when she asked if he was all right, because her kindness was like a knife in his heart. If he let her, she would slice through his ribs and the tears he kept from his eyes would fall from his breast.

That night, alone in his room, he read the letter again, and now, out of sight, he let the tears fall. If no one saw them, there was nothing to deny.

He had no right even to be upset. He wished he could blame the letter-writer, but he could not.

His door opened - “Thomas, could I -” Jimmy froze at the sight of his face as surely as Thomas froze at the sight of him standing in the doorway. “Oh.” For a second, Jimmy glanced out of the door as though he would leave; Thomas wished that he would. Instead, Jimmy came inside and shut the door behind him.

He stood awkwardly a couple of steps away from Thomas on the bed, raising up on the balls of his feet a few times. “Are you all right?” he asked, then grimaced at the question.

Thomas wiped his cheeks with his sleeve. “I got a letter from my cousin,” he said hoarsely. “He’s - I haven’t spoken to him for ten years. He wants to be a valet. My father… They’re not allowed to contact me. My father said they weren’t allowed when he disowned me. There’s only my cousin and his parents but none of them have written in _ten years_.” Thomas fell silent, dwelling painfully on this.

“Have you ever written to them?” Jimmy asked, squinting a little.

“I wasn’t supposed to… and they… they never _fought_ it. They didn’t say anything. So… I never wanted to, really.”

“So why now? I mean, why has your cousin written now?” Jimmy came to sit beside him, and as Thomas watched his own twisting hands, so did Jimmy. “What’s his name?”

“Simon. Like I said… he wants to be a valet. He’s looking for tips. Wants to put it all behind us or somethin’.”

“Bastard,” Jimmy said feelingly, and Thomas appreciated his anger.

After a moment, Jimmy asked, “Is that all he wrote for?”

Thomas shook his head miserably, and looked up at Jimmy’s face. “My mum’s dead.”

Jimmy grimaced again. “I’m sorry. So he wrote -”

“She’s been dead for three years.”

Jimmy’s face went blank with shock.

“I didn’t even know,” Thomas managed to say through his renewed tears. “Three years and I never knew, I never wrote, I never asked how they were. My own family.”

“They never told you either,” Jimmy pointed out.

“Simon obviously thought I knew, he just said his mother had been sad recently because of it being three years since her death. How could I let it get like this? I should have _written_.”

Everything felt empty then; Thomas, his bedroom, Downton Abbey, the whole world, because his mother was not in it and he had not even known. Only Jimmy seemed solid and real, sitting beside him.

“I shouldn’t even be upset, it’s my fault it got this bad,” Thomas choked.

“ _No_ ,” Jimmy said firmly. “You’re allowed to be upset. But you don’t have to feel guilty for what someone else has done.”

His conviction startled Thomas into silence for a moment. Jimmy looked slightly embarrassed by his own words, as they seemed to take on a life of their own, a third presence in the room. Thomas thought about them vaguely, as though glancing at them quickly out of the corner of his eye, then looked at them fully.

_You don’t have to feel guilty for what someone else has done._

Thomas let them inside his heart, and found that while they did not quite fill the hole there, they patched it up so that nothing more of him would leak out. He turned to Jimmy - he _had_ to hug him - and luckily Jimmy let Thomas wrap desperate arms around his body because Thomas would have broken if he had not.

After a moment, Jimmy lifted his arms, and hugged Thomas back.


End file.
